This Guest Blogpost for the Washington State Tech companies is a by product of our recent UASG Coordination Group meeting in Redmond. We encourage UASG members to make themselves equally famous (more famous) with their local tech groups by doing something similar. The UASG is happy to help with the words if you need it. Don

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Are Washington Companies Ready for the Next Billion Internet Users? Don Hollander <https://www.washingtontechnology.org/author/don-hollander/>April 27, 2017

Washington is home to some of the world’s biggest technology companies, as well as start-ups reinventing the way we work, live, and play. While these companies are on the cutting edge of digital transformation, there is one component of their digital strategy that many have overlooked: the issue of Universal Acceptance (UA). Let me explain.

Universal Acceptance (UA), Defined

In recent years, the Domain Name System (DNS) has expanded dramatically, fueling increased competition, choice and innovation, and helping the Internet become truly global. There are now more than 1,200 generic top-level domains (gTLDs), many of which are longer than the traditional three-character domains (e.g. .com, .edu, and .org) or are in non-Latin based scripts – such as Arabic, Cyrillic and Hindi.

The expansion allows organizations and individuals worldwide to claim a domain name that best reflects their sense of identity. While this expansion is critical in bringing the next billion people online and growing the global Internet economy, the incorporation of these new domains across the global Internet is not an entirely automatic process.

Universal Acceptance is the concept that all domain names, including the newer, non-traditional ones, should be treated equally. However, many organizations and businesses have not updated their systems to accommodate the new domains, or, in other words, become UA-ready. For example, problems may arise when a user enters a domain name or related email address into an online form on a website and it is rejected. When this happens, it not only frustrates the user and reduces the opportunities for the organization to win a new customer, but it also lessens the cultural, social, and economic benefits made possible by the Internet.

Benefits of UA-Readiness

The Universal Acceptance Steering Group <https://uasg.tech/> (UASG), a global consortium of organizations including Washington-based Microsoft, Amazon, and domain registry company Donuts, recently commissioned an independent report <https://uasg.tech/whitepaper/> that highlights the qualitative and quantitative benefits of UA. The report conservatively estimates that there is a potential $9.8 billion annual revenue growth opportunity from both existing users using the new domain names and from new Internet users coming online through Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). <https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/idn-2012-02-25-en> From a qualitative perspective, the report also showed that when governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) become UA-ready, they are better able to engage with their citizens and communities who want to choose their own identity with their own domain name, whether in English or non-English scripts.

Steps You Can Take to Become UA-Ready

While the issue of UA can seem daunting at first, the good news is it can be addressed quite easily through what can be described as a “bug fix” or routine update to online systems. The report found that the efforts for software and application owners to implement UA are not particularly onerous, and are outweighed by the benefits that could be realized by doing so.

To help you get started, the UASG has developed a number of helpful guides and resources, which are available at https://uasg.tech/documents <https://uasg.tech/documents>. Of particular note is the Quick Guide to Universal Acceptance <https://uasg.tech/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/UASG005-160302-en-quickguide-di...> (UASG005), which is available in multiple languages, as well as the Introduction to Universal Acceptance (UASG 007) <https://community.icann.org/download/attachments/56990805/UASG007-version-8-...>, a comprehensive technical document on Universal Acceptance and the key issues that developers and system architects need to know. We encourage you to visit our website and view these useful materials, and also to get involved with the UASG (you can join the mailing list at https://uasg.tech/subscribe <https://uasg.tech/subscribe>). CIOs, web administrators, application developers and others have an important role to play in making sure their applications work in harmony with the evolved Internet infrastructure – and this is a critical issue where Washington companies can lead the way.

Subscribe to the Blog <http://www.washingtontechnology.org/subscribe-wtias-weekly-blog-digest/> Don Hollander is the Secretary General of the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (www.UASG.tech). The UASG is committed to getting all software applications to accept all domain names and email addresses – including new top-level domains and domain names in non-English characters. Don has served as CIO, CEO and Chair of technology organizations in New Zealand and the Pacific. He has been working for decades to raise awareness of ICT issues for economic, social, cultural and individual prosperity. Don and his wife own Book Haven, a second-hand bookshop in Wellington, New Zealand.

Don Hollander Universal Acceptance Steering Group Skype: don_hollander